The Press and Lynchings of African Americans

Abstract

In July 1930, newspaper men poked around Emelle, Alabama, trying to ferret out details of the lynching of Black man as well as several other slayings. A few White residents who had been on hand when the men were killed refused to talk about the events to reporters from The Tuscaloosa News. What the hell are you newspaper men doing here? asked White man who had been part of the vigilante group. We're just killing few negroes that we've waited too damn long about leaving for the buzzards. That's not news (Raper, 1933, p. 67). The White resident had that part right. During the 1930s, after thousands of African Americans had been put to death by mobsparticularly in the South but in other regions of the country as well-lynchings were no longer unusual or shocking events that deviated from the norm. They were, as Howard (1995) noted, a routine, everyday sort of villainy that were primarily southern and almost always inflicted upon Black, rather than White, people (p. 14). Approximately 4,742 individuals were lynched between 1882 and 1968; of the victims, 3,445 or 73% were Black (Zangrando, 1980). During the heyday of lynching, between 1889 and 1918,3,224 individuals were lynched, of whom 2,522 or 78% were Black (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], 1969). Typically, the victims were hung or burned to death by mobs of White vigilantes, frequently in front of thousands of spectators, many of whom would take pieces of the dead person's body as souvenirs to help remember the spectacular event. Historians have long known about lynchings, and numerous books have been written about the subject (e.g., Brundage, 1993;